The best — and fairest — way to cap global warming is to empower indigenous forest peoples, reduce food waste and slash meat consumption, an alliance of 38 non-governmental organizations (NGO) said yesterday.
Restoring natural forest ecosystems, securing the land rights of local communities and revamping the global food system could cut greenhouse emissions by 40 percent by the middle of the century and help humanity avoid climate catastrophe, they said in a 50-page report based on recent science.
Approximately half of the reduced emissions would come from boosting the capacity of forests and wetlands to absorb carbon dioxide and the other half from curtailing carbon-intensive forms of agriculture, the report said.
On current trends, Earth is on track to warm up by an unlivable 3°C to 4°C above preindustrial levels, far more than the 1.5°C climate-safe threshold endorsed last week by the UN in a major climate change assessment.
In the wake of the UN report, two starkly different visions are emerging on how to beat back the existential threat of global warming.
One calls for geoengineering and the aggressive use of technology to draw excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, especially by burning biofuels and capturing the emitted carbon dioxide, a process known as “bio-energy with carbon capture and storage.”
The other, favored in the report, titled Missing Pathways to 1.5°C, is based primarily on Earth’s natural capacity to absorb carbon dioxide.
“This is a pragmatic blueprint for tackling the climate crisis while respecting human rights and protecting biodiversity,” said Kelsey Perlman, forest and climate campaigner at UK-based NGO Fern.
“Decisionmakers must abandon their faith in unproven technological solutions and put restoring and protecting forests at the center of climate strategy,” he said.
However, how to do that remains a challenge: More than two decades of UN-led efforts to curb deforestation have largely failed, with the planet still losing a wooded area the size of Greece every year.
Deforestation — responsible for about one-fifth of greenhouse gas emissions — intensifies global warming in two ways: by reducing Earth’s capacity to absorb carbon dioxide and releasing huge amounts of the planet-warming gas into the air.
The report highlights research showing that native forest communities should play a key role.
“People who live in, and with, forests protect those lands,” said lead author Kate Dooley, a political scientist at the University of Melbourne. “Recognizing this is the greatest forest conservation success story in the last decade.”
“We have to give these peoples not just land rights, but the resources to protect those lands,” she added.
The report also tackles the political hot potato of how to change human behavior in ways that would reduce humanity’s carbon footprint — cutting back on travel, using public transportation, switching to electric vehicles.
However, it is revamping our diets that would have the biggest impact of all, the report said.
“Even bigger emissions can come from producing and consuming less meat,” especially beef, ActionAid International climate change policy officer Teresa Anderson said.
A study published in Nature last week calculated that rich nations would have to eat 90 percent less meat by 2050 to sustainably accommodate a projected global population of 10 billion people.
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